


Unwritten History

by enamis



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Character Study, Childhood, Coming of Age, F/M, Family, Gen, Independent New Vegas (Fallout), Loneliness, Melancholy, Memories, No Dialogue, One Shot, POV Child, POV First Person, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Game(s), Relationship Study, Retrospective, Strained Relationships, gender-neutral protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-04 01:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enamis/pseuds/enamis
Summary: My Mother was the Empress of New Vegas.My Father was the Keeper of the Divide.I was all the roads they walked together.





	Unwritten History

 

 

**=‘(O)’=**

 

I was four when I met my father.

I awoke to the off-blue sky and sunlight streaming through the glass shell of the cradle atop the Lucky 38. Yes Man did not greet me as he’d had every morning for as long as I’d been alive. Left to my own devices I stalked through those sterile white halls with bare feet.

The first thing I heard above the endless humm of machinery was that of echoing laughter.

Took very little to find them.

Mother was a thin woman with ashen skin strewn with scars, the most pronounced between her eyes, her hair bleached a platinum white that seemed to grow lighter with each passing month. Holding her up, their foreheads pressed together was not a man I’d ever seen. Broad shoulders and dark skin sporting just as many scars as her, his head full of tangled, mismatched braids. He was the first of the two to spot me, my mouth agape ever so slightly.

A friend of Mother’s. Only those could walk freely within the 38, I’d know that much.

He did not speak as she beckoned me.

She asked if I recognised him.

There was a familiarity there. One I was too young to have understood. Like a mirror warped through time.

Kind eyes.

Both of them.

It did not take long for introductions.

We were fond of one another. Like I had known him all that time.

The world was suddenly different.

Better.

I was five when Father taught me how to braid my hair.

I was paler than him but my locks were just as dark and unruly. I learnt of the warped patterns and all the words it had once spoken. Feathers and furs and scales and flowers and scrap and paints and bullet casings blended together into tales I could never truly decipher beyond the most basic.

I don't think he ever expected me to.

He had once told me he was living history. A history that he would never make me carry.

Sometimes I wish he’d had.

He wove the first words in my hair.

Kind. Soft. Precious.

I wove something new in his.

Father. Happy. Storyteller.

I learnt the phrases of the three braids stretching from Mother’s temple, tying together the rest of her silver hair. They held meaning she was never to know.

Bright. Fearless. Uniter.

Mother. Survivor. Courier.

Deathless. Bloodsoaked. Conqueror.

I dreamt of the stories my hair would one day tell.

I was six when I walked amongst the denizens of Mother’s Empire.

Father hated it all, he did not hide it. He was not fond of the flippancy of Vegas. Of the hedonism, of the degeneracy. Of people coming and going, none ever staying long enough to matter. He found it distasteful. What was an Empire without people. Without unity. He once called it nothing more than a brothel on a grand scale.

I ambled through Freeside with a mechanical dog by my side, not a place in the world as safe, with a thousand eyes both metal and living on me. King was one of the few who knew of me, of Father. He alone had kept peace whilst Mother had wretched control of the Mojave for herself, as well as all the times she had simply vanished.

She owed him more than she would admit.

He was fond of me. Of us both.

He was one of the few Father could not talk into submission.

Took me too long to realize it was the reason Father couldn't stand him.

It was these days in the sun that I do not remember as anything other than blurred bliss. Of exploring and hiding and playing. Of a carefree life where every evening I would sit between both parents and retell them of the day we had just spent together.

It was the only childhood I had.

And in the Wasteland, children do not last.

I was seven when Father walked East.

They fought. A lot.

Father spoke of the Bull with kindness in his voice.

Mother spoke of the Legion with disgust reserved only for those most reviled.

Father detested the Bear and their mimicry, their excess.

Mother insisted the NCR were at least trying to better the world.

I would ask Yes Man to play music right next to my ears so I wouldn't have to hear the screaming.

When Father left he said Mother had forgotten what had made her  _her._

She threw a snow globe at him.

It didn't break.

I still have it.

I was eight when I first felt the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I was old enough to finally understand all the things once said. All the arguments and snips that had gone over my head. All the times Mother and Father had swallowed all the bitterness between them to be beside me.

It was the first time I realized just what monumental people they were.

Everything they had accomplished.

All the history they had unwittingly made.

All the history they were writing before my eyes.

And I realized I would one day have to live up to that.

Somehow.

Yet in those days of Father’s absence and Mother’s workaholism I felt well and truly alone.

I was nine when Mother vanished in a flash of blue lightning.

Yes Man dutifully followed her words and mine. Few noticed her disappearance. I barely felt her absence. Vegas continued to thrive.

She returned months and months later sporting laser burns on her forearms and a maniac glee. Carrying with her she’d brought weapons and tech and research unlike any seen before.

She told me stories of Big Mountain.

Of men who wished to claim the world and the stars. Of things so fantastical even I would not believe. Of the place that gave her those old scars at the base of her neck and along her spine.

Her stories were not unlike the ones of Father’s from long ago. Of the Big Empty. Of monsters of metal, and men too far gone to remember that they were once just that. Men.

For the first time I wholly yearned for the world outside the one I had known.

Of the vastness beyond the walls of Vegas.

I was ten when I killed.

When I filled the skulls of geckos and hounds with scrap lead from halfway across the desert.

I was a natural.

It was Yes Man that gave me pointers and showered me in praise for every landed shot in place of Mother. It was the AI that kept watch as I slept pressed up against the rock faces. That kept me away from the gangs and the beasts too mighty even for the fleet of Securitrons I pretended to not see just out of the corner of my vision.

To keep me safe. To keep my misguided innocence.

I felt helpless.

Craving to discard the tangle of an endless security net Mother had smothered me in.

When I returned to the Lucky 38 with a haul of fresh meat Mother pretended to not have watched my every step. Pretend not to have intervened many a times. To keep me at a distance from the darkness lurking in the same nooks and crannies of the Mojave she had once walked.

She said she was proud of me.

All I could do was wonder if Father was as well.

I was eleven when we fell into war.

They were not the Bull, the Legion. But they had once been. And they ran with those that hadn’t. Those that had once heard the tales of a rich oasis of light deep within the desert. Men poured down from the North, from the East. They brandished EMP’s and cut swaths through Mother’s army.

Amidst it all she looked for him desperately. I knew she was grappling with the thought that Father might’ve brought the Legion of old down on her.

On us.

I never believed.

The whole of the Mojave came together under her banner. A lone poker chip hanging from the necks of those who stood for their home in these wastes.  _Our_  Wastes.

Yes Man locked down the Lucky 38 just to keep Mother from grabbing her rifle and running to the front lines. Didn't keep her from cracking every lock and going anyway, a wave of panicked Securitrons racing after.

I stayed for as long as I could. A human touch added to the thoughts of an AI. I could never dream to match Mother’s genius but it was something. An extra pair of eyes, an extra mind.

It did not last.

One day when it all became too much even from the distance, when the machines around me became too suffocating, I took off running. I wanted to see it. All of it. The death, the chaos, humans in their most primal.

I found her the same time he did.

Mother cried when she saw Father come from the West. From the canyons, from the Divide he’d been guarding for these past years. He’d ventured towards the Mojave from idle curiosity, from the loneliness he wouldn't admit. For me. Only to catch the lights in the night and the tremble of the earth from another war wracking the desert sand.

He said he’d seen them in passing long ago whilst trying to find something, anything worthwhile far beyond the plainlands. Beyond the roaming remnants of Caesar, of Vulpes, of the Bull he’d once loved so much. He hadn’t believed those would ever return. He hadn't bothered to tell Mother of them. Of his own whereabouts. He assumed she’d always know where to find him.

Mother ripped into him for that, without meaning a word of it. Even I could tell she was well and truly glad he was simply beside her again.

The skirmishes raged on. Father scouted, Mother planned, the Mojave fought and died. It brought out the worst in everyone. The NCR caught wind. Tried to step in. To once more try to bring their order to an unstable Vegas.

Mother rained fire down on them before they had a chance to throw themselves into the fight.

The warring ended as suddenly as it began, the invaders retreating overnight.

Or so we thought when they sprung from hiding. When they slaughtered Mother’s faithful, our camps, our injured. When they tried to hurt her.

Hurt me.

She did not give them the chance.

And for the first time I saw it. That darkness. The true eyes of a woman who had the gall to claim this broken world for herself.

The reflections of those bleeding in the dirt, those running, those begging for mercy that would not come.

All I could do was watch her press the gun into the foreheads of the attackers, the people, the  _humans_  before her and pull the trigger without a shred of remorse.

I saw for the first time what Father had once seen in her. What he’d kept seeing, but that which I had been too young, too naive to have understood.

I saw steel.

I saw rivers of blood hidden behind the veil of kindness.

I saw a woman with death in her wake.

And I was afraid.

I was twelve when I left for the Divide.

It was a long trek. We crossed the Mojave flanked from all sides by the remnants Mother’s mechanical army as she loosened her grip on the one thing more precious than her Empire. Till the distance grew too far and her voice too faint and marred with static, she surrendered me to Father’s domain, her many screens trailing us as we vanished within the canyons, her final words still echoing through my head. Her final advice.

Her warning.

Father speaks his truth, but his truth is rarely that of the world.

The road was quiet.

Until we heard the Divide.

Part of me had not truly believed of the scars carved deep into the flesh of the earth, of the dark sky torn asunder, of sharp sands and rending winds, till I stood on the precipice of this vast, ruined grave.

This place, nothing more than stories in my mind until this moment, was the place I had once come from.

This is where I’d been born.

Somewhere deep within this decimated landscape, in a storage room of a derelict missile silo, I had breathed my first.

The story goes that Father had carried Mother and I all the way to the Mojave without rest, before relinquishing me from his grasp and into the cradle that was Vegas, before returning to his once self-imposed vigil within this hellscape.

Father confessed he regretted it.

Regretted letting me go for so long, left to grow among the den of vipers Mother ruled over. He regretted not being decisive enough between me and the shackles of the Divide. Regretted thinking Mother was any more reliable than he.

He still believed he held a duty to this place. To its memory if nothing else.

But he was willing enough to bend that oath for my sake.

He ran his hand through my hair and told me I would always come before the world.

I had long known I was nothing more than a mistake made in an inopportune moment. I’d long known I was the reason my parents had twisted and abandoned their paths, their goals, their lives.

For the first time I wondered if it had been a good thing.

I was thirteen when we cleaned the Divide.

Nothing would even scare me as much as aligning my crosshairs with the eye socket of a Deathclaw Matriarch and pulling the trigger. Nothing would ever fill me with such relief to see that beast collapse.

Father was… more insane than I expected. At times I wondered if I was the only in my family that had any sense of self preservation. But as I aided him in our efforts, that preservation had a habit of getting in the way.

We collapsed tunnels, burned nests, ripped through rubble. We shredded the land, gouged new paths, broke down the old.

Eyebots swarmed around us. Father would swat them away with Old Glory. He never shared Mother’s fondness for robotic companions. He would call them many things. Disloyal was the one I never understood.

The few Marked Men still standing always watched us from afar, in their hands weapons ranging from ramshackle clubs to things far greater than any found in the Mojave. They were not like the ghouls of old, the mindless, rotting, shambling, rabid things anyone worth their caps could dispose of with a good enough aim.

I had long since grown familiar with them.

As they had with me.

They would shadow us when given the opportunity.

Even if they knew they would meet their end at our hands.

They never dared approach.

I’d once asked, only to catch the briefest of smiles pass beneath Father’s mask as he told me it was simply eyes.

Those of my mother’s to be precise.

From the long years they had walked the Divide before me. The eyes of a demon of a woman who tore through the ranks of the damned like wet paper, armed with nothing but a rifle and bloody determination.

There is a reason she had become legend, even to those who’d long given up all but their barest of instincts.

Damn good reason Father had grown fond of her so.

A kindness veiled in steel.

I was fourteen.

Father told me stories.

The good and the bad.

Of running with the Bull.

Of Hoover Dam.

Of the Burned Man whose name he still carried.

Of all the twisted corners of the world he’d seen.

Of the Divide and all that had once laid here.

Of Mother.

How she built this place and ripped it to shreds twice over without remorse.

She did not remember.

Father’s truth was not the truth of the world.

Yet I listened.

He spoke of America. And I found myself recalling all the things I’d heard from Yes Man. All I’d heard from Mother and her circle of distant friends. From the old voice that came from a single, unintegrated speaker linked to a deadlocked room in the 38 none could venture into.

And for the first time I found myself disregarding Father's words. The things he’d never seen and people he’d never met yet still he had assigned his own twisted meanings to them.

And suddenly everything felt that little bit clearer.

Yet I listened.

I was fifteen when I finished what Mother had started.

Within the bowels of the canyons Father and I found the last buried silo.

My childhood spent amongst robots had left me with a natural ease with Old World tech. It was grueling work, but it finally gave and the final nuke was left as nothing more than a silent hunk of metal.

The Divide had changed in my years here. Subtle, but Father had been first to notice. The wind wasn't as sharp, the skies a little clearer. Each passing month we’d have to suck down less and less RadAway.

Tunnelers rarely surfaced, Deathclaws didn't breed, Marked Men grew quiet, weary.

We spent our days tracing old roads and the new. Father marked our paths with his symbols, I with Mother’s Pip-boy. We fortified resting places. Hid weapons. Wove stories.

The Divide would never be what it once was.

But perhaps it could begin again.

I was sixteen when I returned.

I was different but Mother greeted me the same.

Mother greeted us both.

And for a brief few moments the weight of the world was not upon our shoulders.

For a brief few moments we were a family.

For a brief few moments I felt like everything was just right.

It did not last.

But it had been enough.

I was seventeen when the first Council of New Vegas was assembled.

Under the flag of a platinum chip, a simple six upon its surface.

Many knew it as meaning that of the six original tribes of Vegas. The three Casino Families, the Kings, the Boomers, and the robotic armada flying the mark of the Lucky 38. But the true meaning belonged only to the three of us.

It was Mother.

Or at least the name Father always called her.

The only true name she’d ever known.

The catalyst of the last two decades.

Father and I sat out of sight, on the other end of the cocktail lounge, my head resting heavily against his side. Voices carried. None needed to know of our presence. He stared into the distance. Unreadable. I fidgeted with the metal paws of the mechanical dog in my lap. Just distracting enough to keep me from fleeing.

We listened.

There were others among the Council of course. The Bear had wormed its way back into Mother’s graces with an ambassador of theirs, much to Father’s disgust. Aunt Veronica skulked beneath everyone’s noses, helping to keep and eye on the fading Brotherhood. There were the Followers, a constant. The speaker for the Mojave Caravan Conglomerate. Gun Runners. A radio of one gravely ‘Marcus’. A few folks of the larger settlements and outer Vegas. Yes Man stood beside Mother as himself rather than her right hand.

It was different.

It wasn't the strangling bureaucracy of the NCR. It wasn't the oppressive single-minded weight of the Legion. It wasn't the mob rule of the Tribes. It wasn't the right of caps in the Casinos. It wasn't the dictatorship of the Vaults, of House. It wasn't the rigid, destructive traditions of the Brotherhood. It wasn't the rites of might of the Wastes.

It was everything in between.

It was something new.

Mother spoke.

Others spoke.

They argued.

They agreed.

Dawn broke, shining through the windows of the Lucky 38.

And just like that it was over.

The future of New Vegas was set in stone.

Set in people working together under a common few laws for the betterment of all those around and beneath them.

People believing in doing good.

The air was light even as everyone left.

Till it was only us.

Mother stared at the ground before her and asked Father if this was what he’d wanted a lifetime ago.

He didn't answer.

All he did was press his forehead against hers.

I was eighteen when I realized my parents did not love one another.

At least not in the way I had always thought.

I had long ago learnt of their history. Of intersecting from a distance. Paths crossed long before they’d even heard of one another. They bound themselves without knowing. Bound themselves by circumstance.

And when it all fell apart the strings did not snap as they should have.

Father detested her for what she had done. For the life she stole from him and the great many places she tore asunder. For her coldness, her reliance on those before her, for too many second chances.

Yet he loved her for the life and the hope she had left him with. For being the only person to match up to him. For wanting to do good down to the core.

Mother couldn't stand him for his pretentiousness. For his arrogance, his ruthlessness, his misguided retaliations. For his bullheaded rigidness in face of all they'd seen.

Yet she loved him for he was the only thing left of her past. For being the one of dwindling few who would stand up to her. For his loyalty.

And twisted among it all was the things never written. Things left to the sands of time. For they both only knew of shreds, of pieces that made them whole. And the words they exchanged were ones they could never truly trust.

Father wove a tapestry of misattribution, of himself imposed on things he should never have say over, seeking meaning in the meaningless. Mother swore to a better future while she walked drenched in blood, carrying out the methods of the conquerors she herself overthrew.

They were both so different.

So alike.

And in their own ways they dragged along the burdens of a long dead past neither could let go.

The same way they could never let go of one another.

Because for each the other was something they had lost. And somewhere deep down they both seeked a place they were terrified of never finding if they let go.

Home.

And all I could do was wonder if I would've ever had a place there.

I was nineteen when I received gifts.

Mother and Father sat before me, their demeanor as perfectly collected as they always were. They told me they loved me.

They looked relieved when I told them I knew.

It didn't really matter from who each present was.

An Anti-Material Rifle and sidearm, their chassis engraved.

A worn down platinum chip fastened into a necklace.

A sturdy knife and rucksack full of everything one would need in the wastes.

A duster, the old world flag on its back painted over with a six marked poker chip.

And enough caps to last a lifetime.

It was a gesture.

An invitation handed down to me through them from the world.

I was lucky to have this much.

To have anything at all.

To have grown loved.

To have been handed my liberty.

I was twenty when I left.

The paths I had once followed were not enough.

Mother reaching West.

Father reaching East.

There was so much of the land left to walk.

So I did.

Far from where I’d been born.

Far from where I’d grown.

Far from where I’d lived.

The world was harsh, but it was free.

And so was I.

So I made my own road.

I had long since forgotten how old I was.

I thought of history.

That of the world.

Of mine.

Of days fading from mind.

Of brief flashes of memories.

Of beasts. Of braids. Of guns. Of robots.

Of the bright,  _blinding_ lights of New Vegas.

Of the stillness of the Mojave.

Of the chaos of the Divide.

Of the peace of Zion.

Of the humm of Empty Mountain.

Of everything in between.

Of everything beyond.

Of stories that filled my nights and my dreams.

Of stories I told on the road.

Of the life I had been given.

Of a broken family I called my own.

Of time eventually claiming what it had always been owed.

My Mother was the Empress of New Vegas.

Until she wasn't.

When that slice of the world stood on its own two feet.

My Father was the Keeper of the Divide.

Until he wasn't.

When there was nothing left to keep and the sands gave way to a new old road.

mom and dad were monoliths

Until they weren't.

When it didn't matter if they’d wanted to or not, whether it had been for good or ill, the world trailed the footsteps of the path they’d made.

A world that did not care for them.

A world that would not remember them.

A world that would not mourn them when the light in their eyes faded and they clasped their hands and clutched their weapons and vanished into the Wasteland for the last time.

And they became the ghosts they always were.

And I will forever remain as the only road they walked together.

 

 

**=‘(O)’=**

 


End file.
